The Hockey Mom: How to spend my son's summer vacation

As I’m writing this, I still haven’t made up my mind
on the offseason question that every hockey parent faces every
year. Should I send Sam to some hockey skills clinics over
the summer as he has begged me to do, or should I keep his hockey
gear locked away until the (already very long) season starts in
September?

April Bowling is a mother of two, including one avid little
hockey player named Sam. Owner of TriLife Coaching, a multisport
training firm in Essex, Mass., April also co-founded the TriROK
Foundation.

My gut tells me that he needs the time off. Our whole
family needs a break from the overscheduled circus that is our life
during the school year; between my son and daughter, we juggle six
sports, music lessons and community service commitments. That
doesn’t even account for the commitments of two working
parents who each serve on nonprofit boards and are active athletes
themselves.

At this very moment, I am shuddering thinking of our daily
schedule. Honestly, in my current frame of mind, I can’t
begin to stomach the thought of schlepping him an hour away to an
“edges clinic” on beautiful summer days.

My profession tells me to keep him off the ice during the
offseason as well. I’m always preaching to my clients —
triathletes are notoriously Type-A, driven athletes — that
it’s called an offseason for a reason. Athletes become
burned out, over-trained, injured and ironically less athletic when
they over-specialize and structure their training
year-round.

I was at a USA Track and Field conference last year where one of
the coaches described the problem with his incoming Division 1
athletes — they were specializing so early that they lacked
the well-rounded athletic skills that had allowed him to convert
them to different, more appropriate disciplines as their bodies
finally matured and reached their prime. No longer could sprinters
become hurdlers, or high-jumpers become pole-vaulters. The
unintended consequence of dialing their training in from an early
age was that they were less generally coordinated and adaptable as
athletes even though they were elite physiologically.

This issue already is the subject of intense discussion in the
hockey world as well. In my hunt for answers, I found this
quote in an Athletic Management Magazine piece: “Jack Parker,
Head Men’s Ice Hockey Coach at Boston University, says he is
starting to recruit more athletes from out-of-state instead of
Massachusetts high school and club stars who play hockey almost
year round. ‘By the time I see these kids, they are bored,
burned out, and often injured,’ he says. ‘There are
more players ready to play college hockey in California and Texas
right now than in Massachusetts because they don’t play it
year round. Specialization is killing hockey in our
state.’”

OK, I get it. Too much hockey makes Sam a dull boy. So
you’d think it would be a no-brainer. Summer is for sailing
camp, not for skating skills. However, none of this accounts for
Sam’s vociferous opinion.

He is, in fact, unrelenting. He knows his skating is his
“weakness” and summer is his chance to make up ground
while his competition is at the beach. With big pitiful kitty eyes,
he begs, “It’s just a class, Mom! It’s no
big deal!” He really thinks that if he can just get on the
ice during the offseason, he’ll improve his team, get more
playing time, and be more effective come the fall. It’s a
logical conclusion.

But little does he know that many of his teammates likely will
be on the ice this summer as well, so he’s unlikely to make
up as much ground as he thinks. That fact is partly why I keep
second-guessing my “no-hockey-in-summer policy,”
because our laid-back approach may mean that he eventually gets
left behind and abandons the sport altogether out of
frustration.

By the way, I worry that this is how it starts. Intelligent,
thoughtful, caring parents are goaded into making poor decisions
for their child’s overall well-being because it seems like
everyone else is doing it. Whether its video games, sugary
foods, too much TV, cell phones or a year-round hockey season,
it’s hard to say no when the perception is that everyone else
is saying yes.

Then again, I’m probably just over thinking this. As one
of Sam’s coaches said about his own son, “I’m
locking the bag away until September. If it was good enough for
Gretzky, it’s good enough for my kid.” However,
when I spoke those words to Sam he rolled his eyes and answered,
“Of course, Gretzky didn’t go to skills camp, Mom. He
was Wayne Gretzky. He didn’t need to.”

I do think there is an important difference between flogging one
sport year-round, and working on specific skills in limited
sessions during the offseason. I often have clients spend their
offseason getting filmed and working on swimming mechanics in the
pool, or performing functional stability training meant to increase
their body’s ability to sustain in-season training without
injury. Sam plays soccer, basketball, lacrosse, baseball and swims
throughout the year in addition to playing hockey. He is hardly a
one-trick pony, so if he wants to take what essentially are skating
lessons twice a week, I don’t think it can do any harm.

Ultimately, however, I continue to stumble over the idea of
committing to anything structured this summer. Our family life
became an endurance event of its own over the past year, and we all
need a serious breather, if not a complete rethinking of the number
of commitments we each take on. The benefits might be less
immediately tangible, but I think it’s just as important for
a child to hang out for hours at the beach building castles and
playing with hermit crabs as it is to learn cross-overs and
stopping on a dime.

So on second (and third and fourth) thought, maybe I have made
up my mind. We’re putting the hockey bag away, embracing
summer vacation and all the beauty that brief season brings us here
in New England. If August rolls around and Sam still wants to work
on his skating before the season starts, I’ll let him do a
couple of morning clinics. I’ll remind myself to be grateful
for his passion and work ethic, while remembering that it’s
my job as his mom to do the tough work of determining when enough
is enough for a little boy who won’t be a little boy for very
much longer.

This article originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of
New England Hockey Journal.